Memoirs of a Champ, Vol. III

I apologize for not following through on my suggestion that this blog would be updated weekly.  It turn out John's analysis of parenthood in his post Power Powell Rankings Week 5: A Few Of My Favourite Things (I Hate Everyone Equally, You Can't Tear That Out Of Me) was quite apt.

The good news is that I have some time on my hands today - enough to release a SPECIAL EDITION of Memoirs of a Champ!  The goal of this post is to tackle, dissect and facilitate further discussion on an important topic with potentially far-reaching implications for TFLOEG: trading draft picks.

Why is this even a concern?  Because I think trading draft picks adds a fun and interesting layer of strategy to our Keeper league, but I can't complete a trade with you for my third-round pick in 2016 if that draft spot is occupied by one of my Keepers in 2016.


After giving this dilemma considerable thought, I have come up with two realistic scenarios (with several variations) as potential solutions.  I will try to articulate each scenario clearly and without bias.

**NOTE:  In order to follow along with the Keeper Draft Position Values, please refer to Andrew's post Draft Board 2015 here.  Just a reminder that all non-free agents see their draft positions increase by one round each year.**

Option #1   ---   Loss of Keeper

• This is the simplest option.
• If you trade away a draft pick from the nth round in a given year, you cannot choose a Keeper from the nth round in that same year.
• Example:  I trade Tevin Coleman and a 5th Round draft pick in 2016 to Keith for Branden Oliver and a 3rd Round draft pick in 2016.  In the 2016 draft, I then could not choose my 5th Round Value Player (Le'Veon Bell) and Keith could not choose his 3rd Round Value Player (Eddie Lacy) as those draft spots are reserved for the opposing tradees.

Option #2   ---   Next Slot Available

• This option is considerably less simple, especially due to the potential variations.
• I personally do not think it is fair to specifically reward someone for trading away a draft pick that could end up being shared by a keeper's position, but some may argue that such a rule would add to the strategy, and I would understand that.
• Below I propose the scenario which utilizes the Next Slot Available (Higher Slots First).  However, many other options exist, including (Lower Slots First), (Alternating Higher and Lower Slots), etc.
• If you trade away a draft pick from the nth round in a given year and you choose a Keeper from the nth round in that same year, you will instead trade away a draft pick from the next closest higher round available without a Keeper chosen, unless all higher rounds are occupied by Keepers, in which case you will trade away the highest available round draft pick instead.
• Example:  I trade Tevin Coleman and a 5th Round draft pick in 2016 to Keith for Branden Oliver and a 3rd Round draft pick in 2016.  I choose Le'Veon Bell (5th Round value) as one of my Keepers in 2016, but not Shane Vereen (4th Round value).  Keith does not choose Eddie Lacy (3rd Round value) as one of his Keepers in 2016.  Therefore, I actually trade my 4th Round draft to Keith instead of 5th Round, and he trades me his 3rd Round draft pick as normal, all in 2016.
• The most extreme example of this potentially not working as intended would be if I traded away a 1st Round draft pick in 2016, but chose all of my 1st-through-5th Round draft picks as my Keepers in 2016.  This would mean that the 1st Rounder I should be trading would revert to a 6th Rounder.  This scenario seems a little like circumventing the spirit of the rules to me, and could conceivably occur, although it seems fairly unlikely.
• I do have an idea to eliminate (or at least greatly reduce) the impact of such an unfair scenario.  I propose that a clause should be added that reads as follows:
• Any instance where the selected round of a traded draft pick is worsened (eg. from 1st Round to 6th Round) by n Rounds (eg. n=6-1=5) due to filled Keeper spots of the trador, so too will the round of any one draft pick of the tradee [of tradee's choosing if multiple draft picks] be worsened by n Rounds in the same year;  exception: if the tradee did not include a draft pick in the trade, they will instead be entitled to receive an additional 7th Rounder from the trador as equalization for the unilaterally worsened draft pick.

I hope I articulated my thoughts clearly.  I'm greatly interested in all of your thoughts.

Signing off with a taste of Tom Petty (including contrived relevance to global current events!),

    oh that's nasty